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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
President Barack Obama used his very last State of the Union address to press for action on unfinished pieces of his agenda—including universal prekindergarten and offering two years of free commmunity college to most students—from Congress and his successor in the White House. (Education Week)
School policy—already an underdog topic in the 2016 presidential campaign—could be further marginalized as an issue by recent developments in Washington, not the least of which is the newly minted Every Student Succeeds Act, which is expected to scale back the direct federal role in K-12 education. (Education Week)
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is starting a new $100 million philanthropic fund that will focus on education, he announced on Tuesday. He’s been interested in education reform, for a long time. He helped write a 1998 California initiative that made it easier to start charter schools, and was the president of the California board of education from 2001 through 2005. (Business Insider)
Elementary schoolteachers who scored lowest on Chicago Public Schools’ job performance evaluations were more likely to work at schools serving the city’s most disadvantaged students, an educational think tank concludes in a report released Tuesday. (Chicago Tribune)
A day after unanimously selecting a new leader, the Los Angeles Board of Education once again found common ground by offering its first public opposition to a controversial $490-million proposal to increase the number of charter schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. (Los Angeles Times)